Lady of Blade and Bone
by cryptically
Summary: Set after GoN. Cas embarks on a quest to bring Anna back and succeeds, despite his friends' urging him to move on. Something's been bothering Anna in her afterlife, too. Still, not everyone believes ghosts have a place in the world of the living, and Cas and Anna will have to fight more than rogue spirits if they want to stay together for good. CasAnna. Spoilers.
1. wishbone

**Author's Note**: I read this series and fell in love. This is set after the last book, _Girl of Nightmares_, and is intended to be my take on what I'd love to see happen next. Hope you like!

-cy.

-o-**  
**

**i.** a wishbone that you haven't pulled

-o-

The hardwood creaks across the workroom floor in the old machine shop and he knows it's not him. Too far away. But people will fall for stuff like that, he's seen it enough times to know. They'll tell themselves things like _oh, it's just the house moving_. Or _oh, it must be the wind_. Or the pipes. Or, hell, why not the water boiler or maybe even bats in the attic. Surely there's a completely rational reason for why bumps and creaks are coming from places where nothing is moving, and most people would say that that reason has nothing, zip, zilch, and nada to do with ghosts.

And that, Cas Lowood knows, is where most people are wrong.

Marquette Machine Co. sits on the edge of a factory town long since fallen into decay when the economy in the area shifted towards high-tech products and away from manual labor. From what he's read up on the place, it sounded alright. Typical patron-system for the employees, decent pay, people making handmade stuff. He's kind of nostalgic. Then, he remembers that the ghost is probably nostalgic, too.

Maybe it's something about the way the walls are angled that give him this sense of deja vu. He can't quite place it, even as he winds through the mills, lathes, band and circular saws that form the shop floor. Another odd rattle in the floor echoes through the large room, bounces around like it's caught in the high ceilings, and then abruptly stops.

The fact that the machines are here bothers him. Too many hiding places. Too many things that could go wrong. But he's researched it. It's not wrong or unexpected, it's just the way this ghost operates.

The original owner tried to sell the machines and even found a buyer, but when the hired help came to move them out, one of them met with an unfortunate accident. A few months before, Sam Erkhardt, one of the company's most skilled machinists had messed up on a part and, distracted as he went to throw it out, had forgotten to turn off the lathe he was working on. Maybe someone called out, maybe he was too caught up in his world to notice what happened next. When Erkhardt started to yell for help, it was too late. The lathe didn't have an emergency stop switch at the time thanks to the lax work standards, and none of the senior machinists were able to get to him fast enough.

It was sad, sure, but enough's enough already. The machines sit, corroding and dusty, while anyone who tried to move them from their places met with a gruesome accident.

Cas takes a breath, his fingers already curled around the athame, and steps into the next row of milling machines. Something snaps and sings high-pitched like a rubber band, then silence.

You'd think that after all these years this guy would just want an out, right? Wouldn't he be sick of this crap, being stuck around these hulking, steel and iron behemoths in a warehouse that no one dared to move things in? It seemed like a pretty crappy and equally OCD way to spend your eternity, but then again, ghosts have a tendency not to be all that rational, either.

Especially when you consider that most of the really terrible ones, the ones who you think you feel watching, hovering just over your shoulder when it's midnight and you're all alone, the ones you hide under couch pillows or into a friend's shirt when they rise out of a lake or from behind a corner or just out of nowhere during a scary movie?

Yeah. Those guys are usually the victims.

He leans in towards one of the lathe's chucks and inspects it. It's still got a cutting tool attached and angled in, like it could be used for work. In fact, he's pretty willing to bet that it has been and recently. Someone is definitely at home.

"Knock knock." Cas whispers, touching it gently with a his index finger.

And with that, the saw behind him starts up.

Wait, behind him?

"Oh shit!" Cas ducks as Erkhardt materializes barely a foot from his face. It's pretty bad. Cas has seen a lot, but Erkhardt's right arm looks like someone took a human-sized pair of dull scissors to it, and his half-chewed face and chest chronicle the path that the machine blade must have taken before his death. His arms, not quite whole, are thrust forward in some kind of grotesque half-zombie pose, no doubt intending to push Cas backwards onto the circular saw.

Fuckers like these gave you one chance to dodge. Cas kinda got the logic. They'd only had one chance.

The difference was that they'd, you know, missed it.

The machinist's ghost disappears again. Farther along the floor, another lathe churns into motion, its chuck gently spinning, grinding nothing into shape. On the opposite end of the shop, a mill starts up. Cas grits his teeth. No, of course not, why would it be easy? His mother had nearly pitched a fit about this one when he'd told her that he was going, and already it was turning into one of those trips that he'd have to give her a severely edited version of, let alone explain to her why he was coming back three hours later into the morning than he said he would.

A mutilated arm sweeps across his field of vision, but this time Cas isn't quick enough to dodge. Erkhardt's sweep sends him sidelong into the head of a mill, winding him and knocking him on the head. Hell, he's out of practice. Maybe he should have let his mom sign him up for judo like she's mentioned. Cas shakes the ringing out of his head fast enough to see that his hand carrying the athame is lying in the path of one of a rapidly descending drill on the belt. He jerks it out of the way.

Too close. He's got to do better than that.

Then the lights above flicker.

"You just don't know when to quit." Cas knows his voice sounds pissed off, because that's the way he intends it to, but his lips are still curled into a wry grin. After a two hour drive to this ramshackle rustbelt town on a lead that didn't pan out, he's ready for something to test him, something he can go all out on. And Sam Erkhardt is looking like he wants the same thing.

The lathes whirl into high-speed, shrieking out long, high notes like a mechanical chorus, and the dance begins in earnest.

Metal sounds and reverberates against the tin roofing, keeping the beat, letting him know where Erkhardt is. Cas moves through the machines like he's almost a ghost himself, his feet light against the wood, never committing to one location for long so that the quick-to-start machines can't keep up, and moving in time to the grind and whine of gears. Hunting ghosts is all subjective, he's come to realize. Some people do it because they see it as a black and white, ghosts-shouldn't-be-in-this-world kind of deal, but he takes a different view.

For a moment he imagines that this is a different place, a smaller one, and that it's not a mechanic driven crazy by a horrific death he's dancing with, but a girl in a white dress whose long, black hair whips around her like a stray quarter-note or question mark. They make their way through the movements of their deadly waltz, a romance of metal and machinery, chains and locks clanking into darkness and in some of the turns and dips, he can almost swear he can feel her warmth.

The feeling comes to him sometimes when he's like this, bridging the worlds of the living and the dead with the door of his athame readying itself to swing open and carry off another soul. Sometimes it's when he needs to lose himself in battle so that he can sleep later. Other times it's when he craves the memory of her touch on his skin, the way she smelled, and this is way to bring it back the strongest.

It doesn't last long. A long blade comes at his face and Erkhardt screams and, God, Cas can see how the bits of the man's throat where the lathe cut in growl and shake with his effort to make sound. The athame sings against the saw, sending a shower of bright yellow sparks into Cas' face. He bites back a swear as a few of them connect with his skin, then dislodges the athame from the lock, avoids the ghost's saw, and strikes his own weapon home.

Sam Erkhardt looks confused for a single second and then collapses. And just like that, all the fight's gone out of this place. Even the lathes slowly turn themselves to a stop, their voices lilting back into lower tones and then a dull hum, like they're just walking out their final steps at the end of a marathon jog.

At least someone gets to rest tonight. Cas laughs, pulls the athame out of the floorboard where it's gotten stuck after Erkhardt rapidly decomposed around it. It sticks, but on the second pull he gets it. Rest. God, didn't he wish.

-o-

When he gets back to the car, the windows are all fogged up.

Cas is honestly not all that surprised. This is sort of what he'd expected to happen when he'd told Thomas and Carmel (maybe falsely) that Erkhardt's ghost only came out for people intending to commit suicide, so he'd have to go it alone. They'd still insisted on making the drive out to Marquette with him, but Cas suspected that Carmel had been grateful to sit this one out. He wouldn't have felt comfortable anyway with either of them in that warehouse with him, especially given Erkhardt's tendency to manipulate machinery remotely.

He knocks on the window as discreetly as he can, eyes purposefully looking at the strand of trees in the opposite direction. "Hey, let's go. We're all done here."

Thomas rolls down the passenger window of the Audi, face flushed but sporting a goofy grin. Carmel is pretending to be frantically texting someone about some party tomorrow night, but she's fooling no one. Hell, Cas doesn't even need psychic powers to know that neither of them would have minded if he'd taken his time with that ghost, really dragged it out. He opens the door to the back and lies down across the seats. Still, he's happy that things seem to be working out.

"Long fight?" Thomas asks as Carmel shifts the Audi into Reverse and backs them out of the factory's driveway and onto the road that will lead them to the highway. Sometimes Cas doesn't know why Thomas even bothers asking him these questions when the answers must be coming through loud and clear, but as though in reply the psychic just smiles and shrugs. "Carmel's good to drive for an hour if you want to zone out in back. If you're feeling really out of it, I can do the rest of the way home."

"Thanks." Cas replies. He's more tired than he thought. "I might take you up on that one."

"Hey, how about we stop for fast food when we get somewhere that actually resembles civilization?" Carmel adds. "I could dig that plan. I bet that place we passed on the way down is open late."

Sleepily, Cas agrees to some restaurant that he's forgotten the name of as soon as it leaves his mouth. He doesn't remember much about the drive home beyond a string of streetlights cutting into the darkness streaked with dawn, the metronome sound of machinery clinking, and the feel of her in his arms as they move over a dark wood floor, their footsteps light and fluid as glass. Sometimes he thinks he remembers Carmel and Thomas leaning close in the front seat, but in the semi-dark their features get obscured and they just look like two shadows coming together, forehead-to-forehead.

Or maybe he just imagines it. He just knows that, when Carmel shakes him awake in the driveway to his own house, there's a fast food bag containing two orders of french fries and a chicken sandwich that he's somehow curled his body around and that it's still pleasantly warm. In his half-waking state, he finally remembers what the warehouse reminded him of. It's the dimensions, the angles.

The walls were shaped like Anna's Victorian. How did he ever know that? He didn't even like architecture much and would never have noticed this before she came along.

"God, I am one sorry sucker." Cas rubs his face. This is getting to be too much. He said that he would get over her, let her rest. She'd done enough for him and she deserved it. Yeah, good job, self. Real excellent work happening on the moving on front.

Carmel shrugs. "It's almost four in the morning, Cas. Pretty much everyone awake at this time of night on a Friday will be feeling like crap, either now or later. Thomas said he'll text when he's awake, so let's talk tomorrow about what we found. See ya!"

More like what they didn't find, but whatever. He waves as the Audi pulls out and races off into the night. Sleep, that sounds good. Sleep means dreams and, at least if he dreams of Anna, he'll feel less guilty than thinking about how she's doing when he's awake. The spark burns on his cheeks twinge a little bit as he winces at the sound the front door makes, but soon enough he's inside and, as soon as his body hits his bed, it suddenly seems okay to not think about anything.


	2. strength

-o-**  
**

**ii.** and if this little finger doesn't have the strength

-o-

But he's always thinking about something, like it or not, thinking about her in that Victorian the last time that he saw her, the flick of her white dress as it caught the warm wind as she turned and ran.

He lays on his back, his fingers tightening into the pillowcase. Waking up has been like this for a while.

And yeah, really, it's time to let it go. Put the fantasy out to pasture. He knows that. He'd known her long enough and well enough to be able to read the way the exhaustion was cutting her up, how everything in her snapped to focus when she saw the house restored and heard the other Cas' voice; no, he wasn't blind. He knows that getting to rest after fifty-some years of unconsciously murdering whoever crossed your threshold was what she deserved, what he wanted and still wants her to have.

And he knows she's happy. He heard it in her laugh, caught in the middle of two separate conversations, one with him and with another version of himself.

It's unfair and petty, but in the mornings after a hunt like this he wishes she'd turned back, chosen instead to burst into the Order of the Beedak Doo's basement, scared the shit out of Colin Burke and all his druid cronies with her black hair unfurling around her like a proud war standard, and then... well, gone back with him. He hadn't planned it much further than that, other than being with him.

And he meant this him, the one who hunts ghosts and who's had to be careful with the way he moves his torso lately or else he'll open the stitches holding his gut together after he sank a knife into it, the one who has to take vitamin supplements to keep repairing his liver after a run-in with that bad intestinal juju from the Obeahman, the one who had walked straight into Hell for her and who, if given the chance, would do it all over again.

Not the Cas who was at that house.

Yeah, he feels like a grade-A jerk. Given the choice between a Cas Lowood who hunts ghosts and has to live with the consequences and one who can enjoy a regular high school life with his friends and his suddenly-not-a-ghost maybe-girlfriend, he's not sure if he'd chose differently. He's actually pretty flattered. She could have had anything in her afterlife, and she chose, well, _him_.

_And here I thought you just liked me for my roguish good looks and killer moves with the athame._

She's happy. And he's happy she's alright. But goddamn it, if this was such a happy ending for everyone involved, then why is he still laying awake like this just before sunrise, breathing so fast and panicked that everything swims?

He's never going to see her again.

The subtler pain is how it's getting harder and harder to remember her: the delicate, sarcastic twist of her mouth as she laughs, her eyes and hair dancing like ink in water. Even the sound of her laugh is slipping away in a slow vanish, a cassette tape that he's slowly been wearing into muteness by listening to it too much, and the inevitability of waking up like this one morning and being unable to remember anything about how she sounded hits him like a punch to the gut.

Suddenly, he hates himself for forgetting the smallest details. Wasn't this important enough to him to have been seared into his mind? How the hell can he forget anything?

He closes his eyes, takes a deep breath. He can hear his mother moving around downstairs, making breakfast. Get a fucking grip. No memory can last forever. Not many things do.

But damned if he won't hold onto this for as long as he can.

-o-

"Hmph. I thought the ghost busters were on vacation." Morfran brings out a plate of muffins and cocks a weary eyebrow at him, Thomas, and Carmel clustered around the table near the back of the shop. "Something about some idiot stabbing through several of his own vital organs and needing to recover. Or maybe I'm thinking of another idiot. The one who still hasn't be able to ditch his neck brace after getting gnawed on by a corpse."

He purses his lips as though wondering who these idiots might be. Cas rolls his eyes. You'd think one of North America's most powerful voodoo men would have better material on hand than this, but no, no he doesn't.

"I kinda wish," Carmel says, taking a bite out of a muffin, "you'd said it was a bear attack, like I did last time. We could have gone down in Winston Churchill's history as the only bear-fighting couple alive to attend Homecoming."

Thomas snorts into his coffee. "I am so sure you don't want to be immortalized as a bear fighter, even as Homecoming Queen."

But Carmel flaps her hand as though to dispel this ridiculous notion. "Don't jinx it, we haven't even had the elections yet. I might not get it."

Cas and Thomas exchange a look. Carmel Jones, queen bee of Winston Churchill and the center that all the cool kids and families in Thunder Bay gravitated to like planets orbiting a sun, _not_ win a popularity contest? Fat chance.

Thomas pours himself a second cup of coffee. Or maybe a third. There've been at least a few, judging from the way his hand twitches as he sets the pot down. "Well, we've only got two weeks left of summer left before senior year. How are we gonna spend them?"

Trying to forget her and not forget her. Trying to lock all the parts of his life that remind him of her into a safe room in his head, a place that he can shut away until he needs to remember everything perfectly.

Thomas and Carmel probably want to go on another hunt, and Cas knows he'll have to check through his sources again to find another site that's likely to have a lead, which means avoiding his mother's curious eye and clearing his search history. He's glad they're willing to come with him. With the athame pulsing its voodoo beat through him, lighting him up, sometimes he forgets how small the space between a successful counter and adding to some ghost's body count really is.

Sometimes one of them will give him a raised eyebrow after a close call, almost asking did he really mean to do that? And most of the time, he shrugs it off. Of course he knows what he's doing. He's a professional, been doing this for years.

Still, until now the opportunity to bow out has never seemed more tempting. Anna's gone, there's another athame in the world, someone will get the ghosts that he can't. His father is avenged; the thing that killed him is well and truly gone. All the obligations that he's fought for since he was fourteen (and longer than that, since he first knew he would take up the athame) are fulfilled and the one person he found more captivating even than them is gone, too. So what the hell is he supposed to do now?

But then he thinks about his mom. And Thomas and Carmel. And hell, even Morfran, that old coot.

The chances were probably pretty slim that he'd make it to the right Victorian anyway.

He's not paying attention until Thomas suddenly turns to him, eyes wide. Hell, psychic kid has struck again. Cas clears his throat. "Sorry, I was asleep. What are we doing?"

Carmel, not understanding Thomas' abrupt focus or Cas' reaction, rolls her eyes as though to say _boys_, and then repeats herself. "My parents have a huge, end-of-summer Gala every year, sort of like the grown-up version of the Edge of the World party. Except that it's at my house and the most exciting thing that happens is somebody's parents getting a little too tipsy and falling into the pool while everyone else pretends not to laugh. Naturally, you guys are invited."

From the way she says it, the invitation doesn't seem to be optional. Carmel holds his eyes steadily for a moment longer than normal to let the mandatory nature sink in. But whatever. His mom will be glad that he's getting out of the house to do something other than kill ghosts or pick up fresh litter for Mercutio.

"And I want to experiment with more of that medium stuff." Thomas adds. "The library's had weird hours, but I think I finally have what we need to at least take a stab at something."

Morfran's rough bark of laughter resounds from within the kitchen, and Cas watches with fascination as the tips of Thomas' ears slowly turn bright red.

"What's up?" He asks. "Some secret psychic in-joke?"

"Oh, it's laughable, that's for sure." Morfran says and returns, this time bringing with him his own coffee mug. He notices Thomas' sour look and holds up his hands blithely. "What do you want me to say? I taught you enough about magic to know better than this, boy."

Thomas takes in a breath and holds it, pressing his lips together and clearly trying to keep his opinions on the matter to himself. Cas whistles. Witchy disagreements, who knew. Luckily, someone is at the door to the shop, and Morfran, more awake and mostly presentable, goes to offer his antiquing and/or occult services. After making sure that his grandfather is occupied with a potential customer, Thomas seizes the opportunity and Carmel sighs.

"This isn't going to help anything." She says, looking directly at Thomas. "And I'd like to make it clear at the start that I don't think this is going to be the cure-all you think it will. But, I also know you're not going to stop until you try and that you better not try it without me."

"Try what?" Cas asks, genuine concern seeping into his voice. Carmel hasn't been this adamantly opposed to any ghost business since, well... they tried contacting Anna.

"Well, as you know, I _am_ slightly mediumistic," Thomas preens, like it's this big accomplishment. Seeing no reaction from Cas, he adopts an exasperated look. "Hey, remember? Come on, Anna and the Lappish drum? I found her beat and brought her to it. Remember?"

It's true. But he doesn't see how much good a medium is going to- oh.

A grin starts to spread over Thomas' features. "It might not work, since it's offbrand magic, as Morfran likes to call it, but I figure it's still worth a shot. I was researching mediums, and while a lot of it is obviously fake there's some stuff that rings true. I mean, I'm not completely sure if it would work- usually spirits who are happily at rest want to stay at rest, and Anna was happy, right?"

Cas nods, numb.

"Right," Thomas agrees, "so maybe nothing will happen, but we also don't have anything to lose. It's not like she's going to break a pentacle and rip out our- hey!"

A rolled up newspaper smacks into the back of Thomas' head. Morfran's expression is amused, but his eyes have a cagey sternness glinting in them. "Give it up. 'S a waste of your time."

But even as Morfran goes back to the front of the store to help out another pair of weekend shoppers, Thomas and Cas exchange a look of confirmation. It's happening. Carmel sighs, but it's not altogether without a smile.

"You guys do this party for me, and I will help you summon or medium or whatever all the ghosts you want. But for crap's sake, if she doesn't want to be bothered, you have to leave her alone." This time she's looking right at Cas before she sighs. "I feel like all this is going to do is hurt you more, but since you're so determined to do it, count me in."

She checks her watch and excuses herself; she's got to meet Cait Hecht for coffee and to plan Homecoming. Thomas watches her like he's watching a monarch make her departure, transfixed until the silver Audi streaks out of the parking lot in a regal blur.

It doesn't surprise him anymore, but Cas still shakes his head, trying to wrap his brain around how much Thomas is sticking his neck out for him. He wonders if the witch has known about how he's felt about Anna for a while. It's clear that this has taken a lot of planning and Cas is actually pretty embarrassed he didn't figure it out sooner.

"Thanks, man." It sounds like cardboard in his mouth, rough and serrated at the edges, but he means it.

Thomas looks away from the door and shrugs, a little awkward. "It's not a big deal. This is what best friends do, right? Come on, but seriously, how cool would it be if it works out?"

Cas admits that yeah, it would be pretty cool. And yeah, this is what best friends do.

He's known this for a while, but it feels shocking that this friendship is one of the few things still holding him together. A year ago, when he first came to Thunder Bay, first heard about Anna Dressed in Blood, he would never have imagined it would end up like this. And even though it's tearing him up, he wouldn't change a thing.

Well, okay, maybe one thing. He would have kissed her one more time.

-o-

Sometimes she remembers, but mostly she forgets.

It seems like forever since she's had time by herself to think. Cas said that he'd drive over after he talked to his mom and then they'd do their history homework together at the park before the sun sets. She smiles and then taps her pencil against the desk, and knocking off a few math problems as a breeze winds its way through the open doors of the Victorian.

She likes it. It's maybe a little cool for now and it's reminding her of something that she can't quite put her finger on, but she wants to go out it in, go somewhere. Somewhere where it's even windier. She stares out at the trees outside the front door, the leaves slowly putting on their autumn dresses.

She gets the feeling that she and Cas used to meet up at her house and talk in the living room about everything, but now they travel all across town. Sometimes everything feels so familiar, other times so foreign. She can't remember when they first met. She suspects she's always known him.

But there was something about a job, right? Her brow furrows. Cas did something before that he doesn't do now.

The word floats to her on a cold breeze and then she remembers: ghosts. She sits up, back very straight, and walks out of the house, pace brisk and shivering. She doesn't want to be in there anymore, even though it's bright and clean and white. She needs to think. What happened to his knife? What about Thomas and Carmel? She'll have to remember to ask them why Cas doesn't go out and hunt ghosts anymore if Cas doesn't tell her himself. Her brows are knit into a swarm of confusion. Why hasn't he talked to her about this before? She can't recall him ever mentioning it.

She resolves that she will ask him and goes back to finishing her math. The tree is turning red, red, red and it's so bright she can't help but stare. Thunder Bay's autumns are intense and quick, a splash of ink in water before it dissolves. Pretty soon they'll have snow, and she laughs at the thought of Cas and her running around and making snow forts.

Later, Cas returns and they talk and go out to get ice cream. She doesn't ask him about the ghosts because it's slipped her mind, as easily as the red oak leaves snap off their branches and fall out of sight. They stay out late and talk about everything in her living room, and only when she's getting ready to fall asleep does something trouble her, something pesky she should know, should get taken care of because it _is_ important and she really ought to be able to put her finger on it, but she sighs and decides to leave it for the morning, because here sometimes she remembers, but mostly, she forgets.

* * *

**Author's Note**: Thanks so much for reading and thanks for the kind reviews! I'm going to try to update this more frequently- I'm on twitter (hisluckyaxe) so if you want to say hi, go for it! Next chapter should have more action, and if my outline is right, a meeting between two people who haven't seen each other for a while (ooh, foreshadowing).

-cy.


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